Strategy Guide for Red Hulk in Marvel: Avengers Alliance

Red Hulk is a hero designed for very skilled players of Marvel: Avengers Alliance. Unlike most characters, he doesn’t have a repetitive optimal cycle of attacks. Instead, his attack sequence is almost entirely dependent on the setup of the enemies and how often he is attacked. When played well, he can be a powerhouse and easily one of the highest damage dealing tacticians in the game. When played poorly, he will actually become a liability, dealing damage to allies and stunning himself. Due to his unstable nature, he is best allied with characters that can heal or remove status conditions, like Omega Sentinel, Emma Frost, or an agent with the Scroll of Angolob.

Red Hulk Hero Management Screen

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How to Acquire Red Hulk

This character could be earned for free in PvP Season 8. If not earned that way, he can be purchased for 135 command points.

Special Abilities

Special Ability (Heat Generation) - Heat generation increases the damage of Red Hulk by 10% per stack of Heat. Red Hulk can gain up to 10 stacks of Heat and gains one stack every single round and every time he is attacked. This is the primary manner in which Red Hulk deals heavy damage.

Special Ability (He's Heating Up) - This special ability activates whenever Red Hulk has 40% or higher damage increase from Heat. All of his attacks apply burning and pyrophoric when this ability is active. Since this ability is entirely positive, it is simply a boon that you will usually gain early in a battle.

Special Ability (He's On Fire) - He's on Fire activates whenever Red Hulk has 70% or higher damage increase from Heat. While this ability is active, all attacks made by this hero deal fire damage and are guaranteed to hit against a burning target.

Special Ability (Meltdown) - This special ability is a mixed blessing. When Red Hulk reaches 100% damage increase from heat, he will explode. This explosion deal high damage to enemies and moderate damage to allies. It also removes all stacks of Heat from Red Hulk and stuns him for a round. No effect can remove or prevent this stun. You should generally try to moderate your Heat build up to avoid this explosion. The round of stun is rarely worth the damage to your opponents.

Power Name

Stamina Cost

Damage / Effect

Searing Smash

6.6%

High melee damage

Bunker Buster

20.8%

Extremely high melee damage

Bulwark

12.5%

Protection against all attacks / Self Healing

Gamma Bomb

25%

Area attack debuff

Detailed Power Descriptions

Level 1 Power, Searing Smash (One Enemy, Unarmed Melee, 6.6% Stamina Cost) – Searing Smash deals high melee damage to a single enemy. Additionally, the enemy takes additional damage from future melee attacks and this hero gains a stack of Heat. This can be a very dangerous attack to use once this character has 5 or more stacks of Heat, but it is good for opening a fight in order to quickly increase damage. It is important to level this character to level 2 as quickly as possible so Searing Smash isn’t his only attack option.

Level 2 Power, Bunker Buster (One Enemy, Melee, 20.8% Stamina Cost) – Bunker Buster deals high melee damage to a single target. This damage is even higher than normal on a critical hit or against a target with radiation. Also, this attack removes up to 3 stacks of heat in order to deal even higher damage. This last benefit is the main reason to use this attack as it helps keep this character from overheating.

Level 6 Power, Bulwark (Self, Buff, 12.5% Stamina Cost) – Bulwark causes Red Hulk to protect all allies from all attacks and significantly reduces the damage he takes while doing so. Additionally, he will heal both health and stamina whenever he is attacked. This healing combined with the damage reduction makes him almost invincible while using this power, especially if his defenses are improved by other powers in any way. The only flaw to this power is that he will build Heat quickly, which he will need to purge to prevent an explosion.

Level 9 Power, Gamma Bomb (All Enemies, Ranged Explosion, 25% Stamina Cost) – Gamma Bomb deals moderate damage to all enemies. It also causes radiation to all targets hit. What actually makes it worth using is that it can inflict up to 11 different additional debuffs on all targets hit, many of which are rather devastating. Unfortunately, it also has a small chance of giving the super heroic buff to anyone hit. This chance is usually worth it, especially if there is a character on the team that can remove buffs. As such, this should almost always be the opening attack in any fight, unless you are waiting to gain enough Heat to also apply burning with this attack.

Red Hulk Specific ISOS

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Red Hulk Specific ISOs

There are two ISOs that only Red Hulk can equip.

Smoldering E-ISO (Heroic Battle 2.5.6, Red Hulk vs. Hulk) -When the Smoldering E-ISO is equipped, Red Hulk starts every battle with 40% Heat instead of 10% Heat. This is valuable if you want to get a fast start on dealing heavy damage, but is much less useful if you intend to use Red Hulk defensively.

Endothermic A-ISO (Boss Battle 2.4.2) - This A-ISO equips to Gamma Bomb. When equipped, Gamma Bomb grants 30% Heat to Red Hulk instead of no Heat increase. Like Smoldering, this is useful if you are doing an offensive build with Red Hulk, but actually hurts a defensive build.

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ISO Support

Red Hulk is easily one of the best protectors in the game. You can treat him as an offensive character if you'd like, but that means you need to ignore his best power and still ends up with you juggling Heat. It is much better to think of him as a defender that eventually needs to go full offensive. Support this by buffing his health and defense as much as possible with ISOs. If you really want to make him nigh invulnerable, also buff his evasion, though accuracy probably offers a better payoff. You really don't need to worry about his attack because Heat will nearly double his damage and his powers synergize very well for dealing extra damage. Similarly, he should be recovering stamina from Bulwark, so you needn't worry about increasing his stamina either.

Ally

Advantages

Rating

Horseman of Pestilence (Beast)

Prevents Status Effect Removal

A

Rocket Raccoon

Increases Overall Damage

A

Iron Patriot (War Machine)

Applies Radiation / Deals High Damage / Needs Protection

A+

Best Allies

The best ally for Red Hulk, at least in PvP, is the Horseman of Pestilence variant of Beast. Red Hulk protects him, preventing enemies from attacking Beast, while Beast's special ability prevents enemies from removing status effects delivered by Gamma Bomb. This combo, while impressive, only really works if the enemy includes a blaster or if you can give Red Hulk an extra action with your agent. Red Hulk also pairs amazingly well with Rocket Raccoon. He applies status effects that greatly increase the damage of Rocket Raccoon's ultimate attack. In general, even when you aren't specifically trying to synergize, Red Hulk pairs well with any hero that deals high damage or applies nasty effects, but doesn't have great defense.

PvP

Red Hulk can be as much of a liability in PvP as an asset. Gaining additional actions is a key tactic in PvP, which means there is a good chance that he will be attacked more than enough times in a round to cause him to explode. An unexpected an unpreventable stun can completely decimate your strategy. If you risk him in PvP, you need to be able to mitigate this by either having a means to switch protectors or by using a strategy that assures a quick end to the battle. Prolonged battles are deadly for Red Hulk in PvP. The one slight advantage you have in this is that the Scroll of Angolob, when used by an enemy, will remove all of his stacks of Heat. He offers two major advantages that normally can't be found in a single character. He provides near perfect protection and deals massive single target damage. The latter is less important if he is protecting a glass cannon, but high damage is almost always useful. His main popularity generally comes from his ability to apply opportunity debuffs to all enemies quickly with Gamma Bomb. This synergizes well with many strong heroes. He is a modestly safe bet on defensive teams, but only because other strong protectors have lost their luster, not because he is necessarily the best option. On offense, where you can control his Heat more directly, he is a solid protector worth using in any team that needs one, except specialty teams like Guardian of the Galaxy or Warriors Three teams.

Comments

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Aaron Burton 2 years agofrom US

Dang I gotta get back into laying marvel.

Author

Michael Strauss 2 years agofrom Pittsburgh, PA

I wrote guides for all the characters in the game and originally published them on Yahoo Contributor Network. When that site went away, I regained the rights. I am now publishing them all to this web site. Expect many more in the weeks to come.

James Hagseth 2 years ago

A guide for the one character alone is a great idea I wished I had thought of it. Great hub.